Thyatis: History

In the Time Before History

Long before the Thyatians learned to write, they lived on the southern continent. They weren't called the Thyatians then; each tribe had its own name. They were so fierce and warlike that it is said that they did not laugh at Death, they laughed with him.
In those times, the three greatest tribes were led by three brother-kings named Thyatis, Kerendas, and Hattias. Sailors of their day had discovered that a beautiful land lay to the north and north-east, and so the kings decided to forge themselves new kingdoms there. They built ships and sailed across the unfriendly body of water which separated the two lands. The crossing was long and dangerous, and great storms killed many tribesmen, so the waters were named the "Sea of Dread" by those who survived.
The three tribes settled these lands and built cities named after their kings: Thyatis, Kerendas, and Hattias.

The Days of Reaving

The tribes sailed everywhere, sacking cities and terrorizing men of all nations, except one. These unafraid men were the Alphatians, cunning folk who lived beyond the Isle of Dawn, in cities built by magic. They saw how powerful the Thyatians were and declared that they must add these fighters to their empire, so that they could subjugate the world.

The Coming of the Alphatians

In the year of BC 192, the Alphatians came to conquer. They sent pitiful navies and armies, but these were slaughtered to a man. They sent hordes of monsters; these were slaughtered to the last cub. Then they sent a legion of magicians, wielding powers the Thyatians couldn't withstand, and the Thyatians were at last humbled.
The conquerors tried to turn the Thyatians into Alphatians. They taught the tribesmen letters, arts, music, and even magic. The Thyatians learned all this, then discarded it and invented their own. The Thyatians learned everything the Alphatians had to teach, and improved on it, seething within their restraints.

The Struggle for Freedom

A little more than a thousand years ago, in BC 2, the Thyatians decided that time was ripe for rebellion.
One Thyatian had become a mighty wizard in the Alphatian fashion; he was Lucinius Trenzantenbium. His strongest ally was Thyatian general Zendrolion Tatriokanitas. Between them, they made a plan for Thyatian freedom. Lucinius attacked and defeated each Alphatian wizard in Thyatis, killing all, and proclaimed himself King Lucinius I of Thyatis. In the war that followed, Lucinius and General Zendrolion beat every wave of Alphatian attackers, and stirred the other nations ruled by the Alphatians into revolt. Eventually, the Alphatians, drained of resources, could no longer fight on all fronts and gave up the attack. The Alphatian emperor, Alphas VI, sued for peace, and on the Isle of Dawn, a treaty was signed between Lucinius, Alphas, and the kings of the Pearl Islands and Ochalea.
But Zendrolion discovered that Lucinius had been driven mad by the magics he had learned. Lucinius now planned to rule Thyatis as cruelly as the Alphatians had, helped by the kings of the Pearl Islands and Ochalea. Back in Thyatis City, Zendrolion challenged his friend to a duel and killed Lucinius and those allied kings. Zendrolion took the heavy crown of King of Thyatis and Emperor of the Empire, ruling also the Pearl Islands and Ochalea. He raised monuments to his friend Lucinius and named cities for the first king.

The Struggle - The Other Story

That is the tale as it is taught in Thyatis. Scholars, and historians of the Pearl Islanders, Ochaleans, and others tell it a bit differently. According to their records, Lucinius and Zendrolion assassinated all the Alphatian wizards in Thyatis, and Lucinius duelled only one fairly, in a public display of Thyatian superiority.
Thyatis did war with Alphatia, and the other nations did rebel and fought the Alphatians on all sides. The war continued until all nations were exhausted, and peace was arranged. Thyatis and Alphatia did sign a treaty, and then the kings of the Pearl Islands and Ochalea returned to Thyatis for more treaty-writing. But ambitious Zendrolion murdered all three and made up the story of Lucinius' madness.

The Empire's Early Days

Regardless, in what is now Year 0 of the Thyatian calendar, Zendrolion was crowned Zendrolion I Tatriokanitas, Emperor of Thyatis. He quickly moved his military to conquer the Pearl Islands and Ochalea; those nations, exhausted by the war with Alphatia, surrendered.
But the Thyatians discovered that, in the eyes of their new subjects, they had merely replaced the Alphatians in the role of hatred oppressors. Thyatian conquests everywhere began fierce struggles for independence. Zendrolion's empire looked as if it would soon be gone; and upon his death (by natural causes) in AC 20 it seemed that the Empire of Thyatis would soon be no more.
But Zendrolion's widow Valentia was more forceful and clever than anyone had thought. She seized control and undertook emergency measures. She brought the children of the noble houses of all the subject lands to Thyatis, ostensibly to teach them Thyatian ways, but also as a hostage-taking tactic which stalled her enemies.
Then, asking the advice of her wisest counsellors and noble hostages, she wrote the Citizens' Proclamation, the cornerstone of Thyatian law, which set out the three classes of Thyatian society (Noble, Citizen, Slave), and established that all free Thyatians, even those of conquered lands, were Thyatian Citizens equal in rank and rights to Citizens of Thyatis City herself.
She established a representative body of government, the Senate, with speakers from all over the Empire. The Senate started with little power, but conveyed the illusion that each part of the Empire had a voice in its own rule.
She restructured the Empire's judicial system, mandating a sentence of death for anyone who bribed a judge or senator, and for any judge or senator who took a bribe, leaving the citizens with the impression that what was fair for one was fair for all in the Empire.
These tactics slowed the movements of rebellion and allowed the Empress to hold the Empire together. When at the end of a long and fruitful life she died, she was much respected, and is now remembered as Valentia the Justicar.

The Bright Age

In the centuries after Valentia, the Empire expanded and worked to make reality of Valentia's promises. The Senate, through pressure and sometimes blackmail and murder, gained the right to be the sole body which wrote laws for the Empire. Thyatian forces entered Ylarum and took several Alasiyan cities, securing Thyatis' borders to the north. Arts and learning flourished; cultures mixed in Thyatis City; the Empire remained secure.
Far-sighted Emperors made pacts of peace with the Vyalia elves of the western Dymrak Forest; the elves began teaching their forest spells to selected men and women called Forresters, who learned both to fight and wield magic in the fashion of the elves.
It was obvious that Thyatis would never be able to match the Alphatians in numbers of magic-users... but, unlike the Alphatians, the Thyatian emperors supported clerical orders, that Thyatis might be strong in clerical magic.
Hattians, the most grim of the Thyatian peoples, did not like the direction the Empire was taking. To their way of thinking, conquered peoples were for enslaving, and races were not for mixing. The Empire was doomed unless it was made to follow Hattian ideals; the Hattians decided to strike.
In AC 313, the Hattians rebelled, launching an army towards Thyatis. But Emperor Alexian II withstood their siege, then scattered them with his late-arriving Kerendan cavalrymen. Hattias was occupied and its walls torn down as a sign that it might never again pretend independence of Thyatis.
As Thyatis continued its move into Ylari lands, the northward-moving Thyatians on the Alasiyan coastline ran in the southward-moving colonies of Alphatians; this began centuries of colonial warfare in the Alasiyan lands. Years of Reverses
With northern expansion stalled by the Alphatians, in the sixth century AC the Thyatians began moving west. They bypassed the Minrothad islands and gloomy Traladara to take the pretty Ierendi islands. Initially, they established only prison colonies on these islands, which were already inhabited by halflings. But later, as the Alasiyan conflicts with Alphatia heated up, they seized all these islands and the halflings' lucrative shipbuilding industry there.
This didn't last. In AC 600, the prison colonies rebelled and drove out the Thyatians. Over the next 40 years, the Thyatians tried occasionally to recapture the islands, but resistance was stiff... and the Alphatians were the more pressing matter.
In the eighth century, the Alasiyan war became fiercer. Whole colonies were depopulated by the war; resources were strained. The Thyatians made one last attempt at grabbing the Ierendi chain, but the reconnoitering fleet was ambushed and massacred by the wily Ierendians, so that plan was abandoned.
The Alphatians in Ylaruam began pushing the Thyatians out. Whole colonies were destroyed. Some Thyatians struck out for the Flaemish territories to the far northwest; others came, disheartened, to mainland Thyatis.
In the early ninth century, an Alasiyan chieftain, Suleiman Al-Kalim, united the tribes against both empires and drove them out with religious fervor. Thyatis held onto Tel Akbir and its small peninsula... but Ylaruam was lost to Thyatis. Ironically, by throwing the Thyatians back south and the Alphatians back east, the forces of Al-Kalim also ended that 300-year-long war with Alphatia.

The Tenth Century

Around the Year 900, Emperor Gabrionus IV began a new and glorious period of Thyatian expansion. He sent troops to Traladara, conquered that dark land, and build a new capital, Specularum, on the site of its chief trading village. He expanded Thyatian territories on the Isle of Dawn, then built Oceansend in Norwold.
His son, Gabrionus V, who took the throne in AC 913, was a more scholarly sort who promoted the arts and goodwill between men but let the military slip into decline.. The cunning Alphatians, of course, took much notice of this.
In 959, when the Thyatian navy was seriously understrength and Gabrionus V was an old man, the Alphatians, under Emperor Tylion IV, attacked. They overran Newkirk and West Portage on the Isle of Dawn and prepared to assault the Thyatian mainland. That assault came the next spring, and the Thyatians were not able to stop it.
The siege of Thyatis City was short and cruel. The Alphatians, with their magics, battered down the great city gates and drove like a spike to the palace, where they slew Gabrionus V and proclaimed their victory.
At the time, the most beloved man in Thyatis City was a gladiator, an Oceansend-born Citizen called Thincol the Brave. As the Alphatians began their looting and destruction of Thyatis City, Thincol organised the city's surviving gladiators, mercenaries, knightly orders and army into a massive counterattack. It was a wild, chaotic assault, so unlike the Thyatians' usual orderly plans that the Alphatian forces couldn't deal with it. The Alphatian forces were smashed and pushed back out of the city.
Thincol, ambitious and clever, had rescued Gabrionus' daughter Gabriela during the palace assault. He convinced her that the Empire now needed a strong, harsh man (such as himself) to build Thyatis back to glory. Convinced by the combination of his popularity, looks, ambition, ability, and rescue of her, she consented to marry him, securing his claim on the throne. He became Thincol I Torion, Emperor of Thyatis.
While this was occurring, Oceansend declared itself independent of Thyatis; already the Alphatian assault on Thyatis was causing more harm to the Empire. It took two years for Thincol to reclaim the lost Isle of Dawn cities. Eight years later, Stefan Karameikos III of Machetos offered the Emperor his rich duchy in exchange for clear title to Traladara to the west; Thincol agreed, and used those ducal lands and funds to finish the rebuilding of his military.
Ten years ago, AC 990, Thincol turned his eyes on the Hinterlands, on the southern continent. Hinterlanders, burly brutes with flaming red and yellow hair, occupied those lands in numberless tribes. Thincol admired these peoples and their lands, and decided to take them. For the ten years, his legions have taken territory after territory, tribe after tribe, and the process will not stop until all the Hinterland barbarians are Thyatian citizens... or manage to throw the Thyatians out.
In these years, too, the Thyatians have had squabbles with the Alphatians in Norwold, on the Isle of Dawn, and in the eastern sea-routes. But there has been no major war with Alphatia for nearly forty years... and many believe that it's about time for a new one.